A hard-drive replicator is a device that produces an exact copy (i.e., a “replica”) of a hard-drive. Conventional replicators, also referred to as hard-drive duplicators, are mainly self-contained, stand-alone devices having a number of drive bays. For example, a typical hard-drive replicator may include a drive bay to receive a source drive and two or four bays to receive target drives. When activated, the replicator copies data from the source drive to the target drive.
The stand-alone nature of conventional duplicators provides limited scalability. Moreover, the stand-alone duplicators require operator knowledge of the duplication system and require that the source drive be installed within the duplicator.